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This is the age old goal of almost every singer out there. We all seem to want to learn how to sing higher, but there’s seriously so much conflicting information out there that it can be really difficult to find the right techniques to practice. I know that in finding my own voice, I watched a lot of tutorials on YouTube and tried some things that absolutely demolished my voice for a few days. Hopefully you can skip that part of the learning curve. So, singing higher…

What you DON’T want to do. You do not want to blast your vocal cords up and up and up with the hopes that your voice will get higher. You do not want to “give it more support” by pushing harder and funneling tons of air past your cords. You do not want to scream to warm up your voice to sing higher. Basically, you don’t want to strain your voice with the theory of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. That’s the fast track to scarring your vocal tissue and developing vocal nodes…

What you DO want to do is learn how to blend your registers and sing through your passaggi (plural for passaggio, a small passage from one register to the next. I use this term interchangeably with “bridges”). Learn how to manipulate your voice along the hard-to-sing areas between registers and fill in the cracks in your vocal range. The first thing you’ll need to do here is learn the differences between each register and find them all within your own voice. I’ll post a YouTube video or two on this tomorrow for you… But the general 5 registers are as follows: vocal fry (aka subharmonics), chest voice, head voice, falsetto, and whistle tones. Between each of these registers is a passaggio, and before you learn to blend each register, your voice will crack in each of these areas. After you find your registers, you can begin to practice GENTLY blending them with various exercises, such as lip rolls, tongue rolls, sirens, scales, etc. I will make videos on these exercises at some point, as text explanations won’t be effective… Finally, after you learn how to blend registers, you can find songs within your passaggio(s) to learn. Instead of jumping right into singing a given song with words, practice holding out the notes to be sung, and sing them on any given vowel sound. This will help isolate your vocal cords from the other muscles in your neck and encourage a more relaxed tone when you go to sing the words.

Hope this helps! As always, feel free to ask me any of your vocal questions. 🙂

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I was cruising around the web today, and I stumbled across a medical Q&A site that had some misinformation regarding upper registers. Specifically, someone was asking how to sing higher after going through hormonal/age related changes. This person used to be able to sing in falsetto as a young teen, and after their voice changed, they could only sing falsetto for a short period of time before their voice went hoarse. The answer the doctor gave was incredibly disappointing to me, as he said that once you go through these hormonal changes, you cannot restore your singing range. This is incorrect. It could not be further from the truth, really. What’s even worse is that this is the opinion of many doctors and vocal coaches and singers, and there are discouraging articles all over the internet regarding this topic.

Everyone thinks that as our voices deepen we lose the ability to sing high. The truth is, yes, your voice changes, but you don’t actually lose your range! You just need to train your voice to keep or gain those sounds. You see, there are two changes that happen because of these hormonal changes: your voice gains the ability to resonate deeper, and your natural bridges shift down. Bridges are the notes that act as a “bridge” between vocal registers (such as chest voice, falsetto, etc). When an inexperienced singer tries to hit these bridge notes, they will either sound strained or their voice will crack, and cracks are actually your voice flipping up into the next register. So think about it this way. A young boy’s natural speaking voice might sit right on his future chest-to-head bridge, and as his voice gets deeper and that bridge lowers to that same spot, his voice will crack because it flips out of chest voice and into head voice for a split second. Over more time, he will unconsciously learn to speak lower because of this, and then mentally he will convince himself his old (well, his younger) speaking voice is “high” and no longer normal or easy to use.

Now as far as actually maintaining and being able to use your youthful range, it does take proper technique, practice, hard work, dedication, et cetera, but IT IS COMPLETELY POSSIBLE FOR EVERYONE. Yes, I said it, and I believe it with all my heart and soul. In fact, I myself can sing over 2 octaves higher than I could before puberty! It’s all in your commitment to your voice. Another great example is Michael Jackson. As a boy, everyone thought he would lose his range and his incredibly powerful boyish voice. After puberty, his voice clearly did change, but he was able to maintain an incredibly young and high sound. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, the proper training and practice will always improve and maintain your high notes and upper registers.

I hope you guys find this helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I’ll answer them here.

Cheers!